When I cross a bridge, especially a long tall one, my mind can tend to wonder faithlessly. I may wonder how old this bridge is, or if it can hold all this weight. Ultimately I cross, having put my trust in the work of other people. Even if, while in a hurry, the faithless thoughts don’t cross my mind, I still trusted in work that was done. Christianity is a lot like that, or at least it should be.

“I get concerned when we talk of Faith completely void of works.”

Our faith isn’t a workless faith. We believe that Christ work (John 17:1-5) is the work that accomplished our being reconciled to a Holy God. It is by grace that we trust in that work. Paul in no way suggest that we are saved by faith in nothing. Paul is assuming we understand the WORK of Christ (Gospels) when he illustrates how our work doesn’t save us (Romans-Galatians) he expects us to conclude that its Christ work that does.

“We don’t simply trust in steel and concrete.”

We trust the bridge has been put together in such a way as to fulfill its purpose, to see us safely through to the other side. We don’t simply trust that it is a bridge but that it fulfills a unique purpose. Nor do we trust that Jesus just strolled around Israel making a social impact.

“We trust in His perfect work to bridge the broken relationship between humanity and its creator.”

When a bridge falls, did God rust the bolts? If He did, why? That’s a question that’s begged if your thinking through some of the more recent arguments surrounding “Natural Disasters”. Recent resurging talk of God’s sovereignty relating to natural disasters, to which God is most certainly not on the sidelines while it all unfolds, has unveiled our inability to speak into the tragedies surrounding us. I affirm God’s meticulous sovereignty, but what I am less sympathetic to is the blanket reasoning some are given for his sovereignty and the timing in which they give it.

“Incorrect timing will always polarize and does great harm.”

In the midst of tragedy, we have to weight our responsiveness with the grace of Christ. Too often, those with a voice, choose to pour salt in wounds rather than shed light in darkness. When bridges fall, it’s not the time to talk of God’s meticulous sovereignty in rusting bolts. It’s time to comfort humanity with the grace of Christ in the storm of tragedy. We are quick to forget the spirit of Christ as he looked out over Jerusalem and wept for it’s coming judgment for rejecting him as King, a judgment that he himself rendered, but compassion for them to the very end was evident to all around Him as tears poured down his face (Luke 19).

“When we’ve come to the point of insensitivity to the rain that falls on the just and unjust, we’ve truly found ourselves either unworthy of God’s judgement or unworthy of His goodness.”

Some feel unworthy of God’s judgment and so they form categories of disobedience that they themselves are consistently obedient in. Any unfortunate circumstance that befalls humanity, must be due to the categories of disobedience they’ve formed but are not a part of. While others feel unworthy of God’s goodness and cannot live with out suffering as a sign of God’s love for them. If they have no suffering they will peer into every crevice of themselves and others until they find it.  If we are not cautious we will idolize one of these as an overarching life narrative that we inflect onto ourselves and into the rest of humanity. Both have validity and must be held in balance.

Increasing, I’ve noticed an incoherently glazed-over look on the faces of those who I have Gospel conversations with, who are outside my jarganistic circles. More notably, a women in her middle to late fifties simply had no category for the word “sinner”. It was apparent to us both, that I assumed she should understand what that means, but she didn’t. Backtracking to define my term, found me using something entirely different. I simplified my speech to say “separated”. In a matter of moments, what was a confusingly awkward conversation, turned into a helpful dialogue with which she could understand. I explained, “We were all born separated (Sinner) from God, and so deserving of his continuing this separation (Wrath) for eternity, but God loved us enough to send His son Jesus to rejoin us with Him by His victory over the separation that plagues us (death)”, but in this case I didn’t use the word “Sinner” or “Wrath”. I could see gears that had not moved at all, begin to turn. She was now engaged and very much aware of what I was communicating.

“We have to be aware that language is shifting sand.”

Speaking of humanities condition must include its antithesis. When I explain “Separation” it implies the fix to be a rejoining, which naturally only God grants by grace through trusting in the work of His son Jesus, but when I say “Sinner” it carries the connotation of what I do to cause separation and subsequently implies that I can just stop doing what ever it is causing the separation. Sinner isn’t a terrible word by any means, it’s quite simply more symptomatic of being separated, and if there is a better foundational idea to explain the condition of humanity at its conception, then it behooves us to think seriously about what we are communication.

“Separation comes before you sin, so it follows that separation is the problem to be spoken to.”

As I tried to speak truth into this women’s life, I couldn’t help noticing how terrible incomprehensible I sounded. The entire exchange has me paying close attention to the words I use to communicate the truth of the Gospel.

Keeping peace in his Kingdom, given him by Caesar Augustus, was at the heart of Rome’s expectation for Herod to even keep his kingdom. The birth of the long-awaited messiah posed such an internal threat to the peace and stability of Herod’s kingdom that he ordered the regional genocide of any child within the presumed gender and age range of the messiah (Matt. 2).

“Herod would save his Kingdom at any cost.”

“My crown is called content, a crown it is that seldom Kings enjoy”, William Shakespeare. Democracy makes every man a king, and in this kingdom there is perpetual discontentment without Christ and the casting off all that threatens individual autonomy. Anyone outside of ourselves that threatens our kingdom, will be tread underfoot. Children, the threat to every man’s individual throne, are no longer threatened by this king or that, as much as a million tyrannical would be mothers. In our pro-life verse pro-choice debates, everyone seems to be at fault except the one who stands as queen of the unborn, giving the final “thumbs down”.

“A mother is never more in love with her children, than when she is in love with Christ.”

Christ causes the queens of autonomy to submit to His rule at the expense of their own kingdom. In Christ’s kingdom, children live as a blessing (Gen 2, 9). The answer for the murder of children in our democratic society is the good news of King Jesus permeating the hearts of would be murderers.

“The American church must get its house in order to even speak to the issue.”

We’ve exchanged the truth of God’s blessing in life, for the lie that it is moral high ground to simply prevent it at all. The church will only begin to save the lives of murdered babies when we ourselves understand that we stand condemned in our own limiting and prevention of God’s blessing of life by our methods of preventing life. Are children a blessing our a curse? If they are a blessing, you will act in a way that sees such a blessing flourish. If they are a curse, you will simply act conversely, and you will either prevent children or murder them and everything in-between.

It’s interesting the disparity politicians, especially presidents, take over the out working of their ideology, and I suppose it is somewhat natural. Though we may be missing the “Voice of the People” nature of a democracy. In the strictest sense of the democratic out working any president would have to say that he or she had been elected by the people to be the voice of the people.

“The President speaks the voice of the majority”

While that’s somewhat simplistic and totalizing that is the nature of a Democracy. It may not be entirely true at the nuanced level, but should carry through to the parties major platforms to which most people vote. There is little doubt that America was founded on ancient principles. Principles most often expressed in a Republic. Though complex, the voice of the people can be heard through their representative in a Republic. A reality that some understand more than others is that change occurs at the level of those who would choose rather than those who are chosen. How many politicians can we name that have, after being berated by their opposition, every said ‘your exactly right. I suppose I’ll change my political ways’?

“The Church has to understand that to change the voice of Washington, they must change the voice in their own neighborhood, by way of the Gospel message.” 

Jesus changes a person’s thought processes, by redeeming them from the frivolity of the corrupt mind. Not until the church decides to go into areas of ideologically corrupt voting histories, will they hear a different voice from Washington. Cities often sway states from one view to the other as it works out on the national scene, and we have largely forsaken the cities of America.

We, as Christians, would certainly be a stalwart supporter of the family, and, I would argue, that we alone have the believing infrastructure to support this great fabric of society in a way that is most beneficial to the Church and its surrounding society. The Church is where families come together to be corporately bent and discipled as they worship, so they may go out and disciple. We are making disciples who make disciples. While there are certainly levels, be it according to age or ability, to which education takes its deepest roots, I’m not convinced we’ve gotten it correct in our education of the saints.

“I think it’s fair and safe to say that as we gather on the Lord’s day, we partake in a combination of Worship and discipling.”

I’ve often heard tale of the educational implausibility of synchronistic teaching. I’m not convinced, because the reality of education implies the exact opposite as having its greatest impact. If honesty prevails, it’s simply not that difficult to synchronize the educational efforts of the body of believers. We tend toward mistakenly splitting the family spatially and educationally. There is no doubt of the differing degrees of educational coherency among the age groups, to which the church should certainly meet the needs of, but we can do this and maintain educational and worshipful credibility.

“Why wouldn’t we want to bend the entire family of believers around one portion of text”

It isn’t uncommon to be asked whether I know of a curriculum that does such a thing, and unfortunately, while some get closer than others, it’s difficult to find. More interesting to me is the reality that so many, even outside the field of education, realize the need for this type of synchronistic education. Churches have to maintain teaching discipline and perseverance in the face of every passing fad. Having leadership agreement on predetermined large portions of text allows for all aspects of secondary leadership to prepare to lead every age grouping in the same direction.

“Spatial separation of the worshiping family should only occur in so much as their educational comprehension demands, at what point they come back together to worship corporately.” 

We have to become more intentional regarding the fabric of the families we shepherd. It’s going to be difficult for us to teach family unity, when we are unable to model and embody that very idea. To long have we been at the business of codependency in fracturing the family. In our defense, it’s not intentional, it’s just a norm we except as normal.

“Our counter cultural movement in the church has to be one that reconnects the family at every stage of worship, be it educationally or spatially.”

The pendulum always swings to a crest, and the narrative of suffering is cresting. Cutting our teeth on the suffering narrative, and God glorifying calls to suffer over the past few decades may begin, if not already, to have us understand suffering in an entirely self-centered light. I’m not certain this life narrative isn’t responsively driven to thwart the prosperity narrative it is set against.

“We have been given but one category to bring God’s glory to its peak, suffering, but the whole of Scripture is much more robust and complex.”

When Christ spoke of suffering, He spoke most directly and intently in a soon to be prophetically vindicating narrative to which the world had never seen (Matt. 24:19). We would argue in futility to think persecution didn’t heavily exist in the world’s first few centuries after Christ, and persecution certainly continues on the front lines of the Kingdom’s advance today. Caution must be taken in understanding the great differences between persecution and suffering, and then not to make suffering a commonality of the Christian life. Spreading this idea to the totality of Christendom cannot maintain biblical integrity when made of the most common issues. The woes of life are as easily affecting the just as the unjust. We, the just, find practical differences in that under life’s pressure we emerge victoriously refined.

“Finding our identity in Christ, finds Him just as glorified in triumph as in apparent suffering.” 

Our message is of a victorious King (John 20:30-31). We, as heirs, are victorious in Christ. The very thematic narrative of Holy Scripture is of victory, a victory that solidifies the authority by which we go into the world victoriously testifying and making disciples (Acts 3:19, 1 Cor. 15:24). Suffering takes a back seat to victory, but because we’ve no Theological category for such lack of suffering, we begin to make the commonality of life’s ebbs and flows into the image of suffering. An image that, if not checked, becomes us.

“Not taking great care to define suffering correctly and place it in its proper subordinate category can turn our very identity away from the people of victory to the people of suffering.”

It’s one thing to ask what an author intends to say, just as important is to understand what a reader, or in the very act of which it is written, a participant in the story actually hears. Christ calls John the Baptist the greatest man ever to live, primarily because he is, in one sense, continuing to function in a prophetically shadowy sense (Matt. 11:13), while fleshing out what Peter claims is the desire for all those who prophesied of Jesus to see him make substance of it (1 Peter 1:10-12). John’s message was as prophetically implicit as any other that had walked in his shoes before him. Turn from your idolatry to the one true God, or else judgement. In a direct interaction with the Pharisee and Sadducee wherein he asks them to give an answer to who warned them to flee the wrath that was coming, he goes on to explain that there is one coming after him that will baptize them with fire. The begging questions is what did the Pharisees and Sadducee hear when John said that?

“No doubt the Jewish leaders in the 1st century had an Old Testament frame-work to understanding a baptismal fire, and it as wrathful.”

Fire wasn’t a cleansing agent in the Old Testament as much as it was a wrathful agent (Gen 3:24, Num. 11:1-3, Joshua 6:24, 7:15, Is. 1:7). These examples merely scratch a surface that extends throughout the Old Testament. The emerging reality is a 1st century understanding that would most certainly have understood John’s words of a fiery baptism being the pouring out of the wrath of God (Lam. 2:4). I don’t think, given the political climate in 1st century Palestine that we go too far wondering if they would have even connected this wrath geopolitical, via their current occupants as the Roman Empire. The fully aware Old Testament understanding could hardly escape these two connections, the Assyrians brought fire onto the Northern Kingdoms and the Babylonian’s brought fire onto the Southern Kingdoms. Could John be saying the same of the current occupiers?

“We do damage to a dualistic idea when we connect what scripture does not, as one and the same.”

When John speaks baptistically of the Holy Spirit and of Fire (Matt. 3:11, Luke 3:16), does he mean to say the same thing? The better question is to ask if his hearers have a frame-work to even hear it in similar terms. I’m not sure they do. There’s an apparent division in the Old Testament that speaks of the baptismal outpouring of the Spirit on the righteous (Isa. 44:3, Ezek. 39:29, and Joel 2:28), similarly decreed upon the wicked is fire (Isa. 26:11, Isa. 65:15, Isa. 66:24, Jer. 4:4, ad Jer. 15:14). While these may be delivered simultaneously by the same agent, there is an apparent distinction between the two.

“Having just spoken to the pharisee of wrath, John further illustrates this by connecting it with an immersion of fire for these idolatrously disobedient serpents.”

Those in the New Covenant age that reject Christ for their own idolatry will experience the punishment that the Old Covenant people of God finally did by their being cast into outer darkness as God’s covenant people by the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ and his subsequent fiery wrathful Roman judgement being forever separated from their creator and cast out and into the flames of God’s wrath. An unquenchable flame of wrath that needs the rejected Christ to quench, but alas, He has been rejected.